National Identity and Spanish Republican Exile

This chapter explores the problematic nature of the notion of national identity with specific reference to the ideological and cultural movements that have shaped Spanish history and lay behind the deep divisions which resulted in the Spanish Civil War. It argues that even though any image or idea of national identity is based on an imagined sense of unity, no such unity emerged in Spain in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It contrasts the imposition of a consciously constructed idea of national identity imposed on the country by the Francoist regime after the Civil War with the difficulties faced by Spanish Republicans in their attempt to create a new national identity in Spain in the 1930s and in exile, and their continued marginalisation from Spanish society after their reincorporation into Spanish cultural life with the creation of a new democratic state after the death of Franco in 1975.